Today I am up early to cross the old Shoreham Toll Bridge over the River Adur in West Sussex. The grade 2 listed crossing was first built in 1781 and later rebuilt in 1916 and then recently renovated at huge expense. Until 1970 it took road vehicles, including buses and lorries. It was part of […]

Today, I am taking a stroll through the West Sussex downland town of Steyning. Originally a Saxon settlement, it grew to become an important port town – the River Adur ran closer than it does today. The Norman’s built their castle close by at Bramber and the railways linked it to London for a hundred […]

John Marshall is renown world wide for his paintings of cows. It started as a joke twenty five years ago when he tried avoiding contributing art for a gallery exhibition. John used to sketch charcoal nudes. To exempt himself from the gallery he declared that he no longer painted nudes, but he was concentrating on […]

Back in 1900 the town of Hastings was rapidly running out of water. It had grown quickly towards the end of the Victorian era and all the traditional sources of water had been developed. The Borough Engineer was tasked with finding a reliable and an additional 1,000,000 gallons of water per day. He found it […]

In this video I am off in search of probably the most elegant viaduct in Britain, the Ouse Valley Viaduct. Built to span the valley close to the village of Balcombe in Sussex as part of the London to Brighton railway in 1842, it is a splendid example of Victorian civil engineering. Stretching across the […]

The Long Man of Wilmington has long been a mystery. The strange figure, cut into the north slopes of the South Downs above the rural village of Wilmington with his two staves, has baffled experts for years. Who is he? What is he doing there? I’m Richard Vobes, TVs Bald Explorer and I am in […]